Off the main room, and there was but one, we built a kitchen, and beside it a sleeping-room. This was thought by some of the neighbors to indicate growing pride and a striving after luxury, though the addition sloped to the ground so fast that the side next the eaves did not afford room for one to stand upright. This inconvenience, however, we did not much regard, a little stooping now and then not doing any one harm. The attic over the main room was mine, to do with as I pleased, save some small space set apart for seed-corn and things of that kind in winter. It was reached, and deftly enough, by a ladder of stout poles, which answered the purpose perfectly, and had the great merit, moreover, of taking up little or no room. My bed occupied one corner, and lying outstretched my nose would have scraped the shingles had it been an inch or two longer. These shingles were neither black walnut nor cottonwood, as you may think, but oak clapboards split and shaved in the old way, before shingles were known in the new country. If they did not always keep out the water, it did not enter in any great quantity, and by using a little calculation one might avoid it entirely. The room was greatly to my fancy, and I have never seen one I liked so well. If in summer it was sometimes hot, because of proximity to the roof, air might always be obtained from the window at the end; and as for light and ventilation, this and the crevices in the roof afforded all that any reasonable person could desire. What was best about it, though, was its nearness to the wind and rain. For lying upon my bed, the patter and swash of the water sounded directly in my face, and when the wind pushed and crowded about the house it was not at some far-off place, but in my very ears. Such volume and artfulness of sound, too, words cannot describe, each log and crevice of varying size answering back some note of its own to pouring rain or driving wind. Nowhere else, indeed, have I heard, or ever will, such symphonies; for these things belong to our youth, and come not in like freshness to the mind or wearied body of more mature years.